The Tyler's Place Podcast

From the Wise Master (August, 2010)

Whenever someone asks me why we still have secrets in our organization, since everything is available on the Internet, I always tell them that, “Yes, there’s a wealth of information about Masonry on the Internet – and some of that information is accurate.”

Recently, this got me to wondering what people were saying about us online. A quick search of the web turned up some fascinating supposedly “facts:”

Albert Pike organized the Ku Klux Klan in Arkansas after General Forrest appointed Pike the Grand Dragon of that Realm. He also wrote the anti-black manual for the southern United States.

Freemasonry was founded in England in the early 1700’s by the Venetian party who were also responsible for the East India Company, the royal African Company of slavers, and the slave colony of South Carolina.

The Scottish Rite of Freemasonry has a feudalist lore and legend that is rooted in the black slave trade through the Caribbean Islands.

With British assistance, the Masonic lodges were reintroduced, under the control of the Scottish Rite based in Charleston, South Carolina, as a force for Southern secession.

Since the 1840s, the U.S. Freemasonic structure has been strictly dominated by the Scottish Rite.

Masons are all Christians.

Masons are all Satanists.

Masonry is a religion.

Masons are all atheists.

And my personal favourite: Barack Obama is a Freemason.

I may have to rethink my approach when answering that question. Clearly, our silence only fans the flames of misinformation and that misinformation is given the aura of legitimacy by appearing in the 21st century equivalent of “print.”

Is there a solution? I don’t know. The only thing I can think of is to continue doing what we’ve always done and try to set the best example we can.